My Papers

Revolution. Excellence. Agility

This presentation will illustrate 20 years of personal examples in successful collaborations as well as exciting new trends. Based upon Masson's 20 years of interdisciplinary experience working in films and games, and leading the new team-based game program at Northeastern University, this presentation will highlight how a collaborative approach effects the creative process and provides unique insights behind the scenes.

The video documentation of Terrence Masson's keynote speech Revolution. Excellence. Agility at ISEA2011 is available online in six parts. Please click on the the following links for Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI.

Professionals and academics from every discipline are increasing their collaboration between film and game production around the world. This presentation will illustrate 20 years of personal examples in successful collaborations as well as exciting new trends. Based upon Masson's 20 years of interdisciplinary experience working in films and games, and leading the new team-based game program at Northeastern University, this presentation will highlight how a collaborative approach effects the creative process and provides unique insights behind the scenes.

Revolution. Excellence. Agility.

Northeastern University in general .. and Creative Industries specifically is based fundamentally around experiential learning; that is learning by doing. Like it or not, the college degree just isn't what it used to be. Now to be fair, having a degree in a technical/creative art like Game Design was never as important as it is in most other fields; but College now is as much a social experience, the experience of meeting and learning from others of your own peer group … interdisciplinary, team based experiences.

REVOLUTION -- We must build programs that matter, we must not only think revolutionary .. but act revolutionary as well. And Creative Industries is that weapon of choice. We've all seen the concept of "Gamefication" spread faster then a cute-kitten video on Youtube. The intersection of art, science and technology has never been more all-encompassing across so many fields. I would bet you'd be hard pressed to think of any example of a field NOT somehow influenced by Creative Industries. Juggling maybe. But beware … If you're going to do something radical and new … not EVERYone will love the idea :) so be prepared to occasionally need a very thick skin indeed.

EXCELLENCE -- I’m more then occasionally in awe of my students raw talent and just love pushing them to new levels of excellence and innovation. Everywhere the levels of excellence continue to rise .. and anyway I hate mediocrity; don't you? Randy Pausch called it "enabling the dreams of others" and that’s something I can buy into, because as a teacher it doesn’t come at the expense of ones own dreams. And another thing; I believe what goes around comes around .. call is kismet or karma, I am where I am because of the help of others and I love influencing others to a better future.

AGILITY -- The curatorial framework of the Conference this year has been set around the idea of "uncontainable". It turns out that I think this is an apt descriptor for the Creative Industries today. No one has any idea where it's going next. None at all. We can however help shape and prepare the very people who are going to make it happen.

Bio

As Director of Creative Industries at Northeastern University in Boston, Terrence oversees all undergraduate Game Design and Interactive Media curriculum and research activities. In addition to also building a new graduate game design program serves on and Chairs numerous committees developing University-wide team-based interdisciplinary projects. He is a member of the Producers Guild of America, the Visual Effects Society and has been active in SIGGRAPH since 1988, most recently as the 2006 Computer Animation Festival Chair and currently as SIGGRAPH 2010 Conference Chair.

SHOTS magazine called Terrence “Possibly the most mobile practitioner in the CG industry” [Nov. 98]. With 20 years of very eclectic production experience, he has served his own consulting company "Digital Fauxtography" as a Creative Producer, Director and VFX Supervisor. Terrence came up through the ranks on about 20 feature films including three Star Wars movies, Hook, True Lies and Interview with a Vampire. He is also well known for single-handedly developing the original CG pipeline for SouthPark in 1996 and as the on-camera image analysis expert for the History Channel’s UFO Hunters.

Interactive projects have included Cyberia2, SimCity4, Batman: Dark Tomorrow, Alter Echo and the Xbox launch title Bruce Lee. As an award-winning Director & Producer his short animated film Bunkie & Booboo won first place in the World Animation Celebration in 1998. He currently is an active international lecturer and consults with major production studios world-wide.